As world marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day, anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise – By Jorge L. Ortiz (USA Today) / Jan 27 2020
International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which Monday commemorates the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, represents one of myriad efforts to keep the lessons of the Holocaust alive – against increasing resistance and acts of hate.
The University of Southern California Shoah Foundation in Los Angeles, a nonprofit founded by movie director Steven Spielberg, features more than 52,000 Holocaust testimonies that are frequently accessed.
Other universities throughout the U.S. teach courses on the Holocaust that professors say are popular with students.
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., received more than 1.6 million visitors in 2018 – 93% of them non-Jewish – in addition to more than 20 million visits to its website.
Yet, incidents of anti-Semitism are on the rise domestically and globally. In its latest audit, the Anti-Defamation League reported 1,879 acts against Jews in the U.S. in 2018, the third highest number in 40 years. The organization also cited New York Police Department figures that said there had been more anti-Jewish incidents in the city in 2019 than all other crimes added together.
Attacks such as the deadly shootings at synagogues in Pittsburgh in 2018 and Poway, outside San Diego, last year, along with the December assault on a New Jersey kosher market – episodes that in total claimed the lives of 15 people – garnered the biggest headlines but were far from the extent of the problem.
“It’s also the kids who snap a ‘Heil Hitler’ salute for a gag, the swastikas scrawled on a garage door, the college campuses where Jewish students are ostracized for supporting Israel,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a Jan. 15 address to Congress. “This moment is about women wearing wigs harassed as they ride the subway or men wearing black hats assaulted as they cross the street. It’s the idea that a person isn’t safe in their supermarket, in their synagogue, or in their home just because they are Jewish.”
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